Having a reliable platform is the most important first step in trading. The tools given to most, and I mean most, professional full priced brokerage firms are complete shit. I used to work at a big bank in NYC and their platform was a fucking joke. When I went indy and had my own shoppe, the clearing agent providing the OSJ will laughable tech. I was embarrassed to show clients the shit I was working with.
Now that I’m like you, an unwashed independent trader, I try them all. I happen to like Motif Investment (I don’t make any money from this fucking plug), but others like TD, Schwaab or Trade. Some homeless men I know trade from Robinhood. The millennials like Robinhood too — what a fucking farce.
How is the platform — be honest? I have no idea.
Some of my friends “trade” at Goldman Sachs. Those guys can fuck themselves.
Most professionals I know also pair a data platform with their trading, using Reuters, Bloomberg, or Factset.
There’s a shit load of stuff out there and I’d be interested in hearing about some website or service that’s under the radar that helps you trade too.
I’ll be out tomorrow during the day, escaping the house due to my aggressive attempts to sell the damned place, and I’m also heading to the beach. So I’ll let this post simmer a while.
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Etrade for me, and it’s worked well for me. I previously was with Options House and while they had good pricing, their execution and customer service were not the best. Since Etrade bought them out, I’ve been happier. The one downfall with online brokers is that most have embarrassing charting platforms. For that reason I have a paid membership with Trading View – and I absolutely love Trading View!
I just found out that Firstrade offers Briefing.com at no charge, which is a solid plus for a commission free broker. I currently use Schwab but close to switching.
Xi Jinping probably front runs your orders after a quick look into the site – just like Webull.
Thinkorswim via TD Ameritrade. It’s phenomenal and free. Analytics, charting, great execution. Can trade virtually everything … Advanced options, futures, etc.
I have been with TDAmeritrade for at least a decade and they’re the only institution that has a powerful enough software package for technical analysis; I really enjoy their market on close orders and conditional trading orders that allows you create sophisticated trade orders. Be that as it may, I am moving my capital to Merrill Edge.
I used to love TD until I lost 250k one day. Market become volatile and the piece of shit platform becomes unusable. Happened multiple times during volatile times. Never again.
Oh, I can attest to this; i’ve seen this happen multiple times whenever there’s volatility. Level 2 lags real bad and you can’t enter orders or see the tape. I remember during Trump and Hillary election, and did it happen during volmageddon? Stupid things like that make the platform unstable; it is also very intensive, like a Bloomberg machine.
I third that. I still use Thinkorswim/TDAmeritrade, but it definitely freezes up during volatile market movements, and I have lost money due to that. I have seriously considered moving to Interactive Brokers, but I am used to the TOS charts, which are pretty good, so I don’t want to go through a learning curve (plus I have many saved charts on the TOS software platform). It used to be that they also included/supported Prophet charts, which also were good, so that I could use two systems (TOS and Prophet) simultaneously. Unfortunately, Prophet charts are nearly phased out now. Now that I’m thinking of it, I really should switch to IB…
Does anyone use the Motif create your own basket option?
Why am I not hearing anything about Interactive Brokers? They have great execution and wide range of markets.
TD is good but tends to hang on huge volume when markets are crashing.
TD/TOS for 10 years, Merrill Edge gives you 100 trades a month if you have $100k between them and BofA, tastyworks is great for options, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Robinhood’s app and desktop since I signed up in March plus they have no commission for options now too.
Schwab. They haven’t made an administration or execution error yet, and they have treated me with respect despite my small account size.
Schwab is actually really really good for active day trading. They have $0 commission because I transferred my accounts from Scottrade and they have pretty good fills to boot.
I wonder how those $0 commission houses make money?
One-eighty- my opinion: for a vertically integrated financial conglomerate cost of executing and clearing routine retail trades is negligible. Just a few seconds of CPU time.
They gain a customer, keep the customer away from a competitor, and have a shot at more lucrative business if the customer evolves.
IB has been good to me
How are IB’s charts? Can you do sophisticated TA with them?